I have recently read two amazing novels about loss of innocence by authors who had similar experiences. Both witnessed the horrors of WWII: Kurt Vonnegut was at Dresden as it burnt down to ashes and J. D. Salinger was one of the first American soldiers to enter a Nazi extermination camp. Yet, they dealt with … Continue reading Tralfamadorians & A Red Hunting Cap
Tag: Classics
…Thus, we start to follow Clarissa Dalloway for a warm day of July as she walks through the streets of London, getting ready for one of her celebrated dinner parties. The city of London is almost presented as a character with large breadth and movement, hourly marked by the bell. It changes within the … Continue reading “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
Fathers and Sons, as the title suggests, is a book about generation conflict set in early 1860s, an important transitional period in Russian history. Arkady and Bazarov return to their families after completing their education in St Petersburg. Their parents are of different backgrounds: Arkady’s father, Nikolai Petrovich, is a wealthy and educated landowner … Continue reading Turgenev’s Observations on a Cycle
Mary Shelley The story of the scientist who ‘plays God’ and creates a monster is so popular that it requires no introduction. Who requires introduction is Mary Shelley, the author of this horrible, scary Gothic novel. She was the daughter of the anarchist political author William Godwin and the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother … Continue reading “Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein wasn’t the monster. Wisdom is knowing that he was.”
The Master and Margarita is a complex, multi-layered satire of the Stalin era. Mikhail Bulgakov started writing the novel in late 1928, not long after the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian Revolution and Lenin’s reforms. The writer who had witnessed all these continued to work on this masterpiece until his death in 1940. … Continue reading When Satan Visited Moscow
